[rlmorel]

I post this anytime I see something on the lightbulb farce...

This is the unaltered graphic from Livermore Labs....

And this is my analysis of the government issued data on energy savings by using CFL bulbs overlaid on it...

[muawiyah]

Virtually ALL of the savings possible in the national grid with fluorescent lights were attained decades back.

By the time Congress got around to worrying about lightbulbs MOST residential use was in fluorescent lights as well.

The error in your thinking is that residential usage consists of mostly lighting. Actually it's heating, cooling and cooking. Lighting usage is negligible!

[muawiyah]

Virtually ALL of the savings possible in the national grid with fluorescent lights were attained decades back.

By the time Congress got around to worrying about lightbulbs MOST residential use was in fluorescent lights as well.

The error in your thinking is that residential usage consists of mostly lighting. Actually it's heating, cooling and cooking. Lighting usage is negligible!

[deoetdoctrinae]

I'm not the greatest at reading graphs, but since the green line is above the red line, does that mean that energy use will actually increase with CFL use?

If so, that's an additional reason to get rid of the darn things.

[MrB]

Your chart shows that incandescents, then, use 12% of 4.65% of the electricity generated... or .558% of electricity generated.

This shows it’s about CONTROL, not about being more efficient.

Just as a site that I post often says - man-made CO2 accounts for 0.117% of the total greenhouse effect.

It’s about control of people’s energy usage, and therefore control of people.

[Teacher317]

I love that graphic... and what is stunning to me is that we lose as much energy ("rejected energy") from electricity generation (as I understand it, the majority of the loss is along the power lines) as we use from petroleum for transportation (gas and oil). Rather than concentrating so hard on forcing free citizens to choose more efficient vehicles, why don't we hear more about savings on this side of the equation??

Our total rejected energy is more than our total energy use.
In electricity generation, we lose 2/3 of our energy to waste.
In transportation, 3/4 of our energy is wasted (hence looking at MPG isn't a terrible idea... I just wonder why it is the primary focus of Congress. Actually, I don't. It's about control.)

[Stosh]

Thanks for the graph.

Actually, the energy savings from abandoning incandescents is even less than that illustrated in the graph.

As I always point out when this topic is raised, it’s automatically assumed that the 90 - 95% of energy not given off as light in an incandenscent is wasted. That is sometimes true, but usually not.

That remaining energy is lost as heat. Anytime you’re heating your home, that heat is not wasted - it simply adds to the net warmth, and hence decreases the amount of energy you have to use to run your furnace.

When your home heating is off, heat from the bulbs is wasted; when your AC is on, it’s doubly wasted, since you have to “fight” the waste heat by using more AC. But the latter situations occur in late spring/summer/early fall, when days are long and lights are used less.

I expect the manufacure of LCD’s and LED’s are more energy-intensive than incandescents as well.

Bottom line - the whole farce makes almost no difference in practical terms, it just makes enviro-weenies feel good about their self-righteousness.

[Patriotic1]

Here’s a question that I doubt could be answered....

Ignoring fluctuations in winter/summer, north/south...How much light is used during the day? I would guess that any calculations are assuming an even distribution of use across daytime and evening. If so, that’s certainly inaccurate.

Considering that no one really knows for sure how much energy use is attributed to lighting, but the numbers are guestimates, I think the whole thing is flawed.